Don’t have a lot of time today, but I did want to chime in on the whole “hunter’s pet is a replacement for X buffs, including Heroism” thing.
On the one hand, as a hunter, it would be nice to have that kind of raid utility. Half the reason I made a paladin was in order to buff people, I’m not kidding. (I was a level 50ish hunter at the time and was very jealous that my brother, a druid, could give people Mark of the Wild and Thorns.)
On the other hand, you must be joking. You’re giving an exotic pet, which is the sole domain of Beast Master hunters, the equivalent of HEROISM? The pet ability system, as it stands, consists of abilities which can be auto-cast or triggered by the player.
Imagine auto-cast heroism right on the pull courtesy of THAT HUNTARD in your group who has no idea how and when to use heroism.
So it’s not only not enough that mages get heroism (through Time Warp) but they’re giving it to HUNTERS?
Look. I’m not the best hunter there ever was, but I know how to play my class. I know how to play my class enough to know that there is a staggeringly large percentage of people playing hunters who deserve to be called huntards. Giving THIS GROUP OF PEOPLE heroism with the ability to be on auto-cast is probably one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard.
Beyond that, what about personal choice of the hunters for a pet? I don’t think I like that, in a 10-man scenario, I might be asked to bring a boar or hyena for the extra bleed debuff. Or that my trusty wolf, Sparky, is going to be a replacement for Leader of the Pack/Rampage.
So instead of basically any class, you can bring a hunter and have them bring a specific pet to buff your group.
I thought we had something with the Drums of Forgotten Kings, Drums of the Wild, Runescroll of Fortitude and such.
This seems like a really, really bad call because I truly believe, with all my heart and soul, that they’re SERIOUSLY overestimating the intelligence of the vast majority of people who play hunters. Like, the people who figured out how to tame a pet at 72. Or the people who still autoshot… and that’s it. Or the people who melee. You know, people who would never even think to google “how can i be a better hunter?” or something.
Sure, I raid primarily as a paladin, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know the basics of being a hunter. I can pull with the best of them, I can kite pretty damn well and I pull stupid hunter tricks all the time (hi, soloed my way to the Elder in Halls of Stone for the achievement). I do pretty decent DPS considering how poor my gear is and I take pride in making a warrior tank think twice about NOT giving me his vigilance in a heroic random.
What they’re doing to hunter pets represents two things:
– further consolidation of the classes, which I loathe.
– the removal of a hunter’s ability to choose what pet is best suited for his or her DPS.
It’s now going to be the hunter’s job to fill in for what’s missing in terms of raid buffs. No shaman? No mage? Get a BM hunter with a Core Hound. Never mind that the hunter might loathe Beast Mastery and might prefer Marks or Survival. You NEED to be BM for the Core Hound which is the pet with heroism.
Does this sound selfish? Perhaps. But maybe not. Hunters are crowd-controllers and ranged damage-dealers. There are several points throughout ICC where a hunter has a specific job to do — dispel the enrage on the Shambling Horrors on Lich King, use his or her pet to help take care of orbs on Blood Prince Council, potentially use their pet for healing purposes on Valithria Dreamwalker. There may even be a time when, due to a complete and utter lack of shaman (and therefore a nature resistance totem) that a hunter may be asked to take a huge DPS loss for Aspect of the Wild. A good hunter should do all of these things (and then beg for a shaman for the next time they do that encounter).
But asking us to provide those missing buffs on a regular basis, especially with some of those skills (heroism, healing, fort, healing debuff) tied to a spec most people dislike and a spec that, at least in Wrath, was not regarded as competitive raid DPS… that’s where you go too far.
If I tamed Sparky because I liked his old Furious Howl and how it upped my DPS, that was my choice. I could make the choice to go with, I don’t know, a cat, and do less DPS. But it was primarily affecting me. With hunter pets getting various group buffs, raid leaders are going to want to control what pet hunters bring.
“Kurn, if you want to raid on your hunter, I need you to have a BM spec and tame a Core Hound. I also need you to bring a wolf, a boar or hyena, a bear and maybe a fox.”
“What?”
“You know, in case we need heroism, Leader of the Pack, Mangle, Demo roar and Thunderclap.”
I have very little interest in being a hunter when our pets will be determined for us by our raid leaders or we likely won’t be able to raid. You can tell me to research my class, to research my gear, to even research my pets, but ultimately, those should be my choices and my choices should not have to constantly revolve around what is best for the raid group. They SHOULD revolve around what is best for my DPS and, on occasion, I will take a DPS hit by using Aspect of the Wild or being on dispel duty or kiting duty or something.
But tying pets to the buffs belonging to other classes? No thanks.
At least, I suppose, this almost certainly means I won’t raid as the hunter. That leaves five 80s to choose from. Wonder which class I’ll rule out next?
Hunters are crowd-controllers
*dies laughing*
Rilgon – Dude, if you don’t think you’re going to have to occasionally haul out the ol’ Freezing Trap in Cataclysm, go try to do the last boss in Blackrock Caverns with four paladins and a druid.
Go on. Try.
Realize that the Devs at Blizzard do numbers all the time and only really play with the best. The number of PUGs they do is extremely limited and they have no clue as to the results. We will see noobs quit the game like crazy because of this. The noobs will not be able to raid or 5 man for crap and then they will nerf Cataclysm to death just to get more income back. This is what happens when you have Programmers that are so isolated from the real world. Number crunchers are horrid at making good real world decisions.
I do agree that the hunter pet changes are pretty drastic. My guild doesn’t have a raiding Shaman so using my best friend’s BM spec for something other than rare pet epeen would be nice. But, I would never dream of telling him to use a certain kind of pet but I know he would if it meant we could down content more efficiently. I am sad that cats aren’t mentioned. It took me days to find and tame Rak’Shiri – my absolute most favorite pet. My wolf is cute but he’s just not Rak’Shiri…
As for Huntards using Heroism, I agree it is a terrible idea. I can just imagine the first trash pull of the night with Heroism and much yelling in Vent. I had the misfortune of being in HoR with a hunter who didn’t “have” misdirection because he wasn’t spec’d into it. /facepalm
“Kurn, if you want to raid on your hunter, I need you to have a BM spec and tame a Core Hound. I also need you to bring a wolf, a boar or hyena, a bear and maybe a fox.”
This is the point of the change. Hunters would have flexibility when you dont have a especific must have raid-buff. In Wotlk you have a very restrited choice to make dps (wolf anyone?).. other family was useless. Actually now they giving us more choice when using pets. Calm down
I think Richard above has basically hit the nail on the head. When the developers at Blizzard put an ability on a class, I think they are only considering its effect within high-end raiding and PvP. I don’t think they care if it’s balanced for five-player content, or questing, or any of that other content. I bet if you could get Ghostcrawler to respond to your complaints—which, I might add, I agree with—he’d probably just say “who cares? Group balance for five-player dungeons doesn’t matter.”
Three of the most thoughtful raiders i’ve run with during Wrath have been Hunters. “Bring the player, not the class” means a lot of things. Rets are going to need a lot more than a shiny addon to be competetive. Hunters are gong to need to know how to use every ability.
Ye Olde Classic Huntard will stand out quite a bit and hopefully start to learn from his failure. I’m sure Blizzard is working on making BM performance acceptable relative to the other two specs. There’s a chance BM will still be lowest, but even now BM is not severely behind.
someone go mad.. cuz pallys dont get bloodlust